Officials Explain Response to Suicide of Young Poway Man

The weekend death of a 22-year-old Poway man who slit his throat in a 4S Ranch shopping center is no longer under investigation and has officially been ruled a suicide, authorities said.

The chief of the Rancho Sante Fe Fire Protection District, whose department handled the suicide call, also has responded to witness concerns about an apparent slow response time and seeming lack of urgency from responders.

"They get a report there is a weapon there, and they don't know the status of the person. They have to wait for a sheriff to get on scene," said Fire Chief Tony Michel.

A witness told Patch that emergency responders drove up slowly without sirens. Michel, who said he was not on the scene, said the ambulance and fire truck arrived at the shopping center around the same time as the San Diego County Sheriff's Department but had to pull over near the shopping center and wait until the deputies cleared the scene because of the report of a weapon.

Once the scene had been cleared, the truck and ambulance likely proceeded into the shopping center without reactivating their sirens, Michel said.

"That's what they may have seen," Michel said of the witness.

A Poway sheriff who responded and "did initiate lifesaving measures"—clutching the man's neck, one witness said—arrived with lights and sirens, said Sgt. Roy Frank from the Sheriff's Department Homicide Detail.

There were a number of witnesses to the man's suicide, including the man's girlfriend. It happened around 4:15 p.m. Saturday in the parking lot of Cost Plus World Market on Reserve Drive just off 4S Ranch Parkway.

The man cut his throat with a box cutter several times, according to the San Diego Medical Examiner's Office. His official cause of death was "incised wounds of the neck." He was pronounced dead at 5:15 p.m. Saturday at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla.

Several readers also have questioned why the man was transported to the La Jolla hospital instead of the closer Pomerado Hospital on Poway Road or Palomar Medical Center in Escondido.

After routing and gauging traffic patterns for that time of day on a holiday weekend, the ambulance crew and fire protection district paramedic chose Scripps as the closest and easiest to reach, said Reema Makani, spokeswoman for San Diego Medical Services (SDMS).

SDMS contracts with the fire protection district to provide ambulance services. Each fire truck also has at least one firefighter paramedic on board.

"They determined that that was the closest trauma center and, based on the patient's injuries, that's where they determined was the best place for the patient to go," Makani said.

Paramedics arrived at the scene at 4:23 p.m., five minutes after they were dispatched, and left for the hospital at 4:27 p.m., Makani said.

It took the ambulance 18 minutes to reach the La Jolla hospital on Genesee Avenue, which is between 16 and 19 miles from the shopping center depending on which route is taken.

Palomar Medical Center, on East Valley Parkway in Escondido, is about 11 miles from the shopping center and is the designated trauma center for North County. Paramedics may not be able to take patients to the closest trauma center if it is on bypass—meaning, not accepting new patients because of space or personnel constraints—but Palomar Medical Center was not on bypass at the time, spokesman Andy Hoang said.

Pomerado Hospital on Poway Road is not a trauma center.